Finnish scientists from the University of Helsinki have discovered where polar bears managed to survive the previous global warming that started about 15 thousand years ago. It turned out that the predators took refuge in northern Siberia and on islands off the coast of modern Canada. To work published In the scientific journal Quaternary Science Reviews (QSR).
At the end of the last ice age, significant melting occurred in the vast ice sheets of Scandinavia and North America, which subsequently helped moderate the planet’s temperatures.
Analysis of fossil remains showed that polar bears at that time lived at the southwestern edge of the Scandinavian ice sheet, but as the ice retreated they were forced to migrate to the coast of the East Siberian Sea in Siberia, northern Greenland and North Africa. Islands of the Canadian archipelago.
According to scientists, the findings show that animals seek the coldest shelters. Because in the hottest period between 9 thousand and 5 thousand years ago, polar temperatures were 1.5-2.5 ° C higher than today’s levels. Warming is causing the amount of sea ice that bears need to hunt seals, their main prey, to decrease.
Researchers believe that polar bears are once again threatened by a changing climate as sea ice in the Arctic regions begins to melt again as a result of human-made warming. That’s why people need to help prepare such shelters in the coming years. Modeling shows that the polar ice cap will disappear during the summer months as early as 2050, meaning bears will increasingly face extinction due to habitat loss.
Biologists before I learnedWhat the first woolly mammoths might have looked like.
Source: Gazeta
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